 |  | Quote: |  | | Posted by Dean | | |  |
| Still can't get the artical up!!Dean | |
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It's a slow loader.
August 01, 1999
Nevada man battling Navy for rights to sunken WWII bomber
INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. (AP) - Doug Champlin insists all he is trying to do is preserve a piece of military history.
But he's found himself in a battle with the Navy and its National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Fla. over a World War II torpedo bomber that sank 55 years ago about 8 miles off the coast of Miami, Fla.
"It's the sole survivor of its type and the sole survivor of the Battle of the Coral Sea and Battle of Midway," said Champlin of Incline Village, a pilot who owns an airplane museum of his own in Mesa, Ariz.
A federal judge in Miami last month awarded Champlin the TBD-1 Devastator that has been sitting 800 feet below the Atlantic Ocean since it crashed on a training mission in 1943.
But the Justice Department, which represented the museum and the Navy in the case, is appealing the decision. And Champlin anticipates the legal contest will continue for another year or longer.
U.S. District Judge Judge James Lawrence King said the Navy abandoned the rare bomber. He awarded Champlin hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney and finder fees.
Officials at the Navy museum don't understand why. They say the plane is clearly government property.
"All I can say is I have no knowledge as to why the judge made the decision he made," museum director Robert Rasmussen told the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza.
Champlin said he claimed ownership of the bomber after he paid a New York based treasure hunter $75,000 for the location and a videotape of it. The treasure hunter discovered it in 1990 while searching for Spanish galleons.
Champlin said he had been trying to obtain the torpedo bomber for the last nine years and had plans to swap it with the Navy for some fighter planes that would go along with the theme of his collection.
He said he originally thought he had a deal with the Navy museum. The treasure hunter had tried to sell the videotape and location of the aircraft to the National Museum of Naval Aviation for the sum of $25,000. But because the museum had no budget for such an acquisition, the purchase was refused.
That's when it was offered to Champlin.
"I thought it was a perfect solution to a problem. I thought it was a very workable solution. I couldn't understand why we couldn't make this deal," he told the Bonanza.
However, according to court documents and testimony, the Navy had already made plans to take the plane away from Champlin.
In 1991, the museum's deputy director Robert Macon wrote in a memo, "Maybe we can even find out where this is by legitimate means and go after it ourselves."
The Navy hired another salvager and filed a court motion to keep Champlin from the plane.
But eventually Champlin's lawyer, David Horan, found Macon's memo. He said he persuaded Macon to admit he had not dealt in "good faith" with Champlin.
The whole experience has left a bad taste in Champlin's mouth.
"I consider it sacrilegious what they did. Their job is to preserve Naval history and they were more interested in making business deals," he said.
Champlin recently made Nevada his permanent place of residence and is a partner with the company International Aircraft Recovery L.L.C. based in Incline Village. He said he doesn't really want to keep the plane.
"I'm still hoping the government buys it back," said Champlin, who has 34 military fighter planes in his museum in Arizona. He said his museum is the only one in the world that shows the evolution of fighter planes.
In July, 1941, with a prospect of the United States entering WWII becoming more certain, the torpedo bomber was assigned to Torpedo Squadron Five, aboard the aircraft carrier "Yorktown" operating in the Pacific theater.
During the next two years, the TBD-1 along with other TBD squadrons, was instrumental in turning the tide of war against the Japanese in both the Battle of Midway and the Battle of the Coral Sea.
"I call it the luckiest plane in the world," Champlin said.
Only three of the TBDs are known to exist and all of them are submerged.
So far, Champlin has estimated he has paid about $300,000 fighting for the Devastator and it will probably cost another $250,000 to bring the plane out of the water. To rebuild the plane, Champlin estimates it will cost about $1 million. He hopes to bring the plane up in spring.
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